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Sam Neill’s death at 78 has left admirers around the world mourning one of cinema’s most respected character actors. Neill died on July 13, 2026, prompting renewed appreciation for a career that stretched across decades and genres. In the days ahead, many fans will likely return to his best-known performances to celebrate the skill, charm and presence he brought to the screen. But if Neill had been asked, there was one film in his résumé he might have advised viewers to avoid.
In his 2023 memoir “Did I Ever Tell You This?” Neill singled out the movie he regarded as the low point of his filmography. That title was “United Passions: The Birth of the World Cup,” the 2014 English-language French sports drama centered on FIFA. Neill admitted he had never watched the finished film, but that did not stop him from calling it, by a considerable distance, his worst screen credit.
“Possibly the worst title ever of a film. And I’m reliably told (I haven’t seen it) that it is rated as one of the worst films ever made, if not the worst,” Neill wrote. “Frankly, I couldn’t give a damn. It was financed by FIFA itself, a vanity project if ever there was one. The offer came, and it came with a lot of money. Ridiculous.”
United Passions is a bad movie that came out during a real-life FIFA corruption scandal
While “United Passions” may not appear on Looper’s roundup of the worst sports movies ever made, its reputation is undeniably dire. The film is among the rare titles to hold a 0% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, and general audiences were not much kinder. Its 12% Popcornmeter rating suggests that even devoted soccer fans found little to cheer for.
“United Passions” attempts to dramatize the origins of FIFA and the FIFA World Cup, with Neill, Tim Roth and Gérard Depardieu portraying real-life FIFA figures João Havelange, Sepp Blatter and Jules Rimet, respectively. The film’s poor reception was compounded by unfortunate timing: Its U.S. release arrived in 2015, the same year a sweeping FIFA corruption scandal erupted and ultimately led Blatter to step down as the organization’s president.
Between its critical drubbing and the real-world controversy surrounding FIFA at the time, the film’s celebratory portrayal of the organization became especially difficult to take seriously. Neill, for his part, was candid about his limited investment in the project: He took the role, collected a substantial paycheck and never watched the final cut. In that sense, at least one person connected to “United Passions” managed to come away ahead.
